Rufus Lee King:miniflea: Gergesa: I remember my parents got my sister and I one of those slip and slide things. That was stupid of us. The back and front yards are not even surfaces. They also have rocks and other such things; not comfortable to slide unless you find a perfectly level yard.

When I was a kid I saw a guy's exposed kneecap because of the slip and slide. There was a big party or something, and it was set up on this hill behind the houses, and apparently unbeknownst to all there was a jagged, rusty metal stake of some sort sticking out of the hill. The guy who hit it wasn't the first to go down the thing by a long shot. Tore his knee wide open. I guess it really wasn't the slip and slide's fault, but after that I refused to go down waterslides of any kind for a long, long time.

I used to constantly beg my parents to buy me a Slip-N-Slide, and they steadfastly refused. I guess they knew was was best, after all.

They got me a "Bizzy Buzz Buzz" instead. Boring as hell, but the only way you could hurt yourself with one was to deliberately jam it in your eye, which was something I never felt inclined to do.

CptnSpldng:Dangerous was a slingshot and a handful of cherry bombs or M-80s.

Heh. When I was a kid, we'd all get together at my grandpa's farm on the 4th. My uncles would send each of the kids off with a bucket full of firecrackers and bottle rockets, and a lit cigarette to use on the fuses.They'd also give you a sip of beer if your mom wasn't watching.

/They'd probably go to jail for that now//Yes, I have a lawn, and you shouldn't be on it.

Did those ever work? I got a kit a few times over the years and was never able to actually make a bubble of any sort.

Where I grew up we couldn't afford the fancy superelasticbubble plastic, so we bought a cheap chinese knockoff that had even MORE fumes in tubes half the size for a quarter each (this was the 1970's). Sh*t smelled like a tire patch kit and the bubbles would get hard in seconds as the volatile solvents evaporated. Made a real nice fireball when lit, as some of those solvents were trapped inside the bubble... at least those that we didn't suck into our lungs.

My friend's fiancee was dumb enough to put one of these into the dishwasher with the wrapper still on. I saw it at the bottom of the dishwasher, wrapper intact. She's not the brightest bulb in the fixture.

[www.staticwhich.co.uk image 246x158]

To be fair, there's a competing brand that makes something like that with a dissolvable wrapper that you have to leave on.

If you saw how she loaded the dishwasher, you would understand. She has almost zero spatial reasoning skills...or any skills, for that matter. And she's ridiculously-lazy.

I had both the Thingmaker and Edible Thingmaker, both of which featured a hotplate that got about as hot as a waffle iron, the first to cure a gooey liquid into a rubbery substance in the shape of insects and such, the other hot enough to cook batter in various shapes within minutes. After I ran out of goo and batter, I used them to melt crayons.

When I worked for the ES&H department of a research university, our radiation safety group had one child's toy from the 20's that was basically a kaleidoscope with a small radium chip inside. That's right kids, get a good gamma dose right in the eye. Fun for the whole family!

/The radium water and codpieces for virility were probably a bad idea too